I'm not really interested in the distinction of whether it was a hunch based on gut or a hunch based on a cursory inspection of the data. I'm fully willing to believe he was as glued to the data as I was during those early months of the pandemic, or more so. He's not an epidemiologist or a public health official, and even if he were those things, decisions about other people's lives shouldn't be made by a a small group of people (or one person), unaccountable to those impacted by the decision, with a massive interest in the decision.
Again, you can grant that Elon is a super genius, and it doesn't impact the moral dimension.
"decisions about other people's lives shouldn't be made by a a small group of people (or one person), unaccountable to those impacted by the decision, with a massive interest in the decision."
That's exactly the kind of people who were making the decisions all along (public health officials and laptop-class academics).
This being why I'm criticizing the actions of Tesla, illegally violating the orders of public health officials, while not being accountable to the public at large or even it's factory workers.
The point I'm making is that public health officials were making "decisions about other people's lives" despite being "a small group of people (or one person), unaccountable to those impacted by the decision, with a massive interest in the decision". Those people are not morally or intellectually superior to Musk, far from it. There was simply no moral culpability for defying public health during COVID - it was and still is a tyrannical and expertise-free group of people that should not have any power or really, exist at all.
Musk was correct that COVID was wildly overblown and similar to flu. Fauci himself said it was flu-like back in March 2020 iirc, because it was. Musk is meanwhile highly accountable; people can just not buy stuff from him. You can't get public health officials out of your life that easily.
